Are They Making the Tournaments Harder?

I've suspected that they're making the tournaments harder for some time. Today several of my team mates were saying that this weeks tournament was way harder than usual. A while ago someone said they'd made the Mages less effective for some reason.

I don't know if any of this is true but I'd like to know if it's a possibility that they sometimes make things harder in the tournaments without telling us?

I haven't noticed. The scrolls tournament has always been the most difficult, especially on auto fight due to the enemy combinations of Light Ranged, Mages and Heavy Ranged.
The fights are always proportionality the same but may seem more difficult due to your squad size increasing and your fighters getting upgrades.
Squad size upgrades increase tournament catering costs and the squadsize of your troops and your enemy troops, so troop losses will be higher proportionally but I believe the actual difficulty of the fights remains constant.

Also, tournaments can spend periods of time seeming to get harder and harder, then they seem to ease back. It's all to do with your precise position in the game, related to squad size, city size, explored area and I think any number of factors.

Also, tournaments can spend periods of time seeming to get harder and harder, then they seem to ease back. It's all to do with your precise position in the game, related to squad size, city size, explored area and I think any number of factors.

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does our explored area effect the difficulty of tournaments? the info i've read made it seem like it was sq sz only

does our explored area effect the difficulty of tournaments? the info i've read made it seem like it was sq sz only

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I'm not actually sure. I think there's a little more than meets the eye, though, as I am certain that the difficulty of tournaments comes in waves and it can't always be put down to just squad size increases. There must be certain triggers which make the difficulty increase, followed by our own advancements, which allow us to catch up.... essentially in the long run it never really gets much easier or harder, I think.

@Pauly7@yo momma love me
Once upon a time, tournaments increased in difficulty was based on explored area, but that is long gone.

Now the "difficulty" of tournaments is static and nothing changes it to make it harder. *
Squad size upgrades decrease your ability to do as much in the tournament because they increase both your army and the enemies at the same rate thus increasing your losses.

Because it takes longer to train 22 troops than 20, that SS the is hurting you in the tournament- this is why it is advisable to skip all optional SS techs until the devs fix this imbalance.**

*while nothing makes fights "harder", various wonders, unit upgrades and 5 day buildings can make them easier.
**afaik the devs have not actually acknowledged that this is an issue, saying that the balance comes in having easier world map fights (ignoring the fact that in the late game you fight 20x more in tournaments than on the map)

I'm not fully sold on skipping the optional SS tech as it's nearly impossible to complete it once you sell your settlement and move to the next chapter (for the ones that need settlement goods to complete). For me to risk that I need to be 100% sure. All I know from my observation that every time I upgrade my SS I do better in the tournament. What I'm kind of wondering that it might be possible that with each SS upgrade the troop losses are higher but also the number of wins is higher too. Bigger army means bigger losses but also bigger wins.

I'm not fully sold on skipping the optional SS tech as it's nearly impossible to complete it once you sell your settlement and move to the next chapter (for the ones that need settlement goods to complete).

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Settlement goods do not disappear after you sell the settlement. So you can just max your settlement goods before moving on, thus if you ever decide to unlock a particular SS Upgrade you have what you need for it.

Now the "difficulty" of tournaments is static and nothing changes it to make it harder. *

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While this seems correct in theory, the next time you are facing the same enemy squads in a low province (under 10 say) and a very high one (over 20) try to autofight with the same troops. I understand there is a lot of variability in auto results, but I have done this many times, and very rarely are the % losses lower in the lower province. You will lose a fair bit more proportionately in the higher province. I suspect this is because of the turn based nature of the combat.

@LazyTony
3 possibilities
1. In lower provinces, you may be facing 1 or 2-star enemies, and this obviously results in lower losses
2. As you said, there's some luck as well since damage is a range and you could roll low or high.
3. It's the terrain. I've done a fight where I won with losing just 1 stack, and then a similar one where I got completely wiped out. After starting the fight manually and then hitting autoplay I saw that my idiot troops were plugging the bottleneck between 2 bushes and getting slaughtered 1 by 1. Then I kept going and the next set up that had the same troops I started manually again and the terrain was wide open and my troops crushed it.

No risk at all. As @shadowblack suggested, spend a couple of days at the end of the guest race gathering goods to unlock the tech in case inno ever fixes it.
Guest race goods stay in your inventory forever, even if you can't see them. (to test this, build a level 1 portal and open it)

I suspect that what you are experiencing is just good timing, where not only did you get an SS tech, but you
1. upgraded a wonder
2. had an easier tournament type this week (like silk is much easier than scrolls for example)
3. logged in more often this week or the week before training troops
4. also upgraded your barracks/TG/merc camp so you are training more per day
5. had leftover troops of the main type
6. chose your units in a more ideal manner than last week
7. just rolled better. Troops do 12,000 to 20,000 damage for example, so there is some element of luck.

This stuff has been tried and tested, and the data miners on beta have found the same information in the game files.

Thank you very much for your input. I’ve based my analysis on it and I came up with the following:

- because I completed all squad size upgrades my training cost is roughly 30% higher
- my points from autofight aren’t affected by SS upgrades because I don’t usually run out of troops, most of the time the troops aren’t strong enough to continue fighting so I stop. I keep upgrading my Barracks and Armories to make sure that I have enough troops.

I still would recommend to at least keep enough settlement resources to be able to complete the SS upgrades just is case Inno changes something or our strategy changes.

@SoggyShorts Points taken and what you say all sounds perfectly reasonable. However.... in practice it does not work like this. I've played in enough +5,000 point tournaments to know that they come in waves of difficulty. For example, I just played the silk tournament (usually the easiest anyway) and got about 5,200 without any trouble. It all pretty much went by the numbers. The same tournament 9 weeks ago, however, was inexplicably much much harder than usual for a silk tournament and I dropped short of what I was planning.

I'm not backing this up with science or game mechanics. I just know that things aren't as straight down the line as you think. In my previous message I was hinting at possibilities for the reasons, though in reality I have no idea what causes the changes in difficulty.

I've been studying the variability factor and it comes down to opponents, for one thing: dryad vs mistwalker, for example. One is weaker than the other, and the tougher walkers have strikeback, as well. We face dryads earlier in the tourney cycle and forget how much more difficult the walkers are until scrolls is upon us again
Also there is the variation on race and barracks troops. The humans are far superior, with the extra range of their priests, and the 2 square strike of the knight class never mind the greater reach of the mortar unit. There are approximately 4 tourneys that favor human troop configs compared to 1 that distinctly favors elven troops.

I'm not backing this up with science or game mechanics. I just know that things aren't as straight down the line as you think.

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They really are though. I was able to test it by being at the end of the tech tree for more than 6 months, and therefore testing the same tournaments 3 times without a change in my squad size.
I faced exactly the same enemies 9 and 18 weeks later. I didn't check every single encounter in all 9 tournaments, but a sample of around a dozen encounters from each of 4 tournament types all checked out.

From a developer's point of view, it makes sense too as this way is quite simple. All they have to do is set the enemy to scale with your SS and that's it. Assuming you find an acceptable balance there's no need to tinker.

- my points from autofight aren’t affected by SS upgrades because I don’t usually run out of troops, most of the time the troops aren’t strong enough to continue fighting so I stop.

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The thing is, in the higher provinces like around 10+, all provinces are pretty much the same, so while your troops are having trouble winning in say round 5 in province #10, they would have no trouble winning a fight in province #30 round 2. However, since you haven't skipped SS techs, those losses would be 30% higher than for a player who did.

I still would recommend to at least keep enough settlement resources to be able to complete the SS upgrades just is case Inno changes something or our strategy changes.

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Absolutely. By the time you are at the end of the guest race you have a level 4 portal and a bunch of buildings, so saving up for that one tech doesn't even hold you back at all since you won't need to tear anything down for a couple days into the next chapter anyways.

The thing is, in the higher provinces like around 10+, all provinces are pretty much the same, so while your troops are having trouble winning in say round 5 in province #10, they would have no trouble winning a fight in province #30 round 2. However, since you haven't skipped SS techs, those losses would be 30% higher than for a player who did.

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I just want to clarify what I found. Even if you do all SS upgrades, you don’t have to run out of troops if you keep your Barracks and Armories upgraded even if your losses are bigger. Training bigger army will not help you if your troops are not strong enough against the enemies. From your information, I understood that the enemy is getting stronger and stronger with each province and round.

Based on my calculations using your info, province #10 in round 5 is the same difficulty as province #22 in round 1. Whatever your squad size is, you will hit a wall on the same difficulty. So this benefit of not doing SS upgrades can be worked around. And most of us upgrade Barracks and Armories anyway.

The only benefit of not doing SS upgrades that can’t be worked around is the cost of training the troops. With all the SS upgrades done, it costs roughly 30% more in supplies to train the same army than with no SS upgrades to achieve the same tournament points. But of course, the better you are in fighting the bigger army you need and also the less you collect, the more armories you need to make up for your losses.

For example, on average I can fight enemy SS that is 1.35 bigger than mine and I don’t seem to have a problem training army to maintain that with 3 armories even though I've done all SS upgrades. So that means that the bigger losses created by the SS upgrades aren't relevant to me. The only thing is that I spend 30% more in supplies on training. I’m sure that there are fighters that can do much better than that and therefore need more armories to make up for their losses if they did all SS upgrades, I just picked the most efficient way of fighting that works for me.

Based on my calculations using your info, province #10 in round 5 is the same difficulty as province #22 in round 1.

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I see where you are getting mixed up now.

Let's say SS 1,000 for easy numbers

Province #10 in round 5 would be
prov 10*5% = 50%, so you bring 500 troops.
round 5 is +45% so the enemy brings 500*1.45 = 725Your 500 vs the enemy 725.
Good chance you get your butt kicked.

Province # 22 round 1 would be
prov 22*5% = 110%, so you bring 1,100 troops
round 1 is -15% so the enemy brings 1,100*.85 =935Your 1,100 vs the enemy 935
Good chance that you win.

Difficulty does not increase from province 20 to 30 to 40 etc

Difficulty does increase from round 1 to 2 to3 etc

The number of troops you bring does increase from province 20 to 30 to 40 etc

The number of troops you bring does not increase from round 1 to 2 to3 etc

Test it out this tournament. Whenever you reach a round where you fail, go instead to a province that you have not gotten a star from and fight- you will have no problem winning at all.
Province # 48 round 1 is just as easy as province #18, you just need more troops.